Canonical has released Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), which will run on Dell PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 servers in an integrated solution enabling Dell's U.S.-based customers to easily deploy Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

This standard edition will allow software developers and IT organizations to run cloud proof-of-concept programs by providing an optimized, pre-configured testing and development environment. Workloads can easily be shared with external providers for capacity growth due to Ubuntu's open-source implementation of the de facto cloud-computing standard provided by Amazon Web Services.

The availability marks the completion of a cooperative engineering effort to give businesses an easy way to build and deploy world-class private cloud infrastructures that work with the most popular public cloud providers. PowerEdge C Servers and Ubuntu software will ship with tested reference architectures and a detailed implementation guide plus support from Dell and Canonical experts.

"Open source is the driving force of cloud computing however we choose to define the concept," said Neil Levine, vice president of Corporate Services at Canonical. "This initiative is a great way for U.S. businesses to realize the power of this approach -- the efficiency, savings and flexibility it brings and the power it can deliver to any data center -- and to start developing their internal cloud infrastructures with hardware and support from a familiar and trusted source."

"Partnering with Canonical has allowed us to deliver an IaaS solution in a tightly integrated package based on open standards," said Andy Rhodes, executive director of marketing, Data Center Solutions (DCS) Division at Dell. "This product release fits into our strategy of bringing technologies to market where we can optimize efficiency at every layer, including servers, storage and code. In this way we are making computing resources more accessible to a wider variety of businesses including telcos, hosters, media and entertainment, and financial services, where there is a substantial amount of software development work."